Current News

A new study has observed detrimental changes in the mammary glands of female mice following exposure to chemicals used in unconventional oil and natural gas (UOG) extraction methods, which include fracking. The study was published in the journal Endocrinology and was led by Laura Vandenberg, an environmental health researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health & Health Sciences. Read more here.

Tay Gavin Lecture Series - The Center for Research on Families welcomed David Grabowski, PhD on February 8, 2018 who presented, "Opportunities and Challenges: Using Market-based Approaches to Encourage High Quality Nursing Home Care."

In his talk, Dr. Grabowski discussed how the quality of nursing home care in the US has been a longstanding policy concern. In response, the use of market-based approaches, like pay-for-performance and quality report cards, has grown in recent years. To date, these programs have been somewhat mixed in terms of improving performance. Dr. Grabowski broadly reviewed the policy issues and discussed several studies focusing on nursing home care and challenges to improving care. Read more about the presentation here.

Taking a receipt from a cashier, ATM or gas station seems like a benign activity however, each time you touch those receipts, you may be exposed to harmful chemicals, since many receipts have a coating of Bisphenol-A (BPA) or Bisphenol S (BPS), chemicals that may be harmful to our health. Laura Vandenberg studies exposure to endocrine disruptors in mice at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Health & Health Sciences. Her research has shown that low doses of BPS disrupt maternal behaviors, the brain, and the mammary gland in nursing females. Read the article here.

Linda Isbell, FRS '15-'16, has received a five-year, $1.71 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to study the influence of emotions on medical decision-making and diagnosis among emergency medicine staff. Diagnostic errors are very common in medicine and often come from failures of “clinical reasoning,” some of which may be related to a medical professional’s emotions, says social psychologist Linda Isbell at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Such errors are especially prevalent when treating vulnerable and stigmatized groups such as people with mental health disorders, who disproportionately use emergency services and may evoke negative emotions.

It's a pervasive cultural attitude, often unconscious, that requires women are to be nice and friendly but also tough and decisive at work. And if a working woman decides to have children, University of Massachusetts sociologist Michelle Budig says, she is making the worst possible move for her career. Listen to the story here.

Current and former Faculty Research Scholars Laura Vandenberg '15-'16, Richard Pilsner '15-'16, and Krystal Pollit '17-'18 speak to the critical need for ongoing research into environment health science in new video from the UMass School for Public Health and Health Sciences.

Sofiya Alhassan, associate professor of kinesiology at UMass Amherst and '16-'17 Family Research Scholar, researches ways of improving children's health. It's this impact that she believes draws students to her field, including many female undergraduates. To these students she tells an important message: get involved early and don't be afraid of making mistakes.

In an anthropology lab in Machmer Hall, University of Massachusetts Amherst senior Emma Berthiaume uses an osteometric board to measure a human femur. She is the very first person to study this bone, buried in the cemetery of San Paragorio church in Noli, Italy, sometime between the years 1000 and 1400.

Berthiaume is making the most of a remarkable educational opportunity: it is highly unusual for an American university to have access to medieval skeletal remains. The bones arrived at UMass Amherst in September through the efforts of Associate Professor of Anthropology Brigitte Holt.

Richard Pilsner, assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS), recently received a five-year, $2.26 million grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to extend and replicate findings in an animal study of his earlier investigation into the effects of phthalate levels on sperm epigenetics and reproductive success in humans.

Pilsner says, “Once again we’ll be looking at paternal preconception phthalate exposures and how these influence sperm epigenetics and subsequent offspring health and development in mice. Specifically, we’ll be studying sperm and oocyte epigenetics in offspring to determine the effect of dads’ preconception exposures on the reproductive capacity of offspring.”

Tay Gavin Erickson Lecture Series — The Center for Research on Families welcomed Steven Hollon, PhD, who presented "Is Cognitive Therapy Enduring or are Antidepressants Iatrogenic?" on Monday, 12/11/17.

Does the addition of antidepressant medications to cognitive therapy (CT) have an iatrogenic effect that interferes with CT's known enduring effect on depression? Might the combination possibly prolong the length of the underlying episode? In his talk, Dr. Hollon presented his research findings, which raise concerns that cognitive therapy provided in combination with medication does little to prevent recurrence of depression. Read more about the presentation here.